Pentadactyl, improved vim bindings for Firefox | Hacker News Reader

Pentadactyl, improved vim bindings for Firefox

dactyl.sourceforge.net

9 pointsenduser8 comments

I really really want to love pentadactyl, but the interfering with google app shortcuts is a major fall through. I just don't see the huge advantage, when most of my browser tasks already have shortcuts. I do like the /-search, but I already use Firefox's accessibility options to do it. I just don't know.

Hit ctrl-z to enter pass through mode, and it will no longer interfere. Hit escape to exit pass through mode.

You can even set up an autocommand to auto enable pass through mode for specific websites and disable it when you move away from the page. au LocationChange .* js modes.passAllKeys = /mail.google\.com/.test(buffer.URL) | /google\.com\/reader/.test(buffer.URL)

that created an autocommand based on the LocationChange event which is run against all websites and then it sets the modes.passAllKeys property to true if the url of the buffer matches that of the regex.

Other than the political stuff, what is the difference between Pentadactyl and Vimperator? I've been using V on one computer and P on another, and haven't really noticed a difference.

Maxauthority, the founder of the vimperator project wrote his thoughts comparing the two on vimperator's google code page (http://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/wiki/VimperatorVsPe...) In general, it isn't much different, however, since vimperator version 3 it will start being much more different as vimperator is now trying to make the user interface as intuitive as possible while keeping the awesome modal controls from vim where as pentadactyl will still try to conform to vim. Check out vimperator 3's design goals: http://code.google.com/p/vimperator-labs/wiki/Vimperator3Des...

I've used both, and I found that Pentadactyl was MUCH faster. In addition, it handles passthrough keys more sensibly. Vimperator required a plugin, pentadactyl uses the passkeys setting. My pentadactylrc: https://github.com/bingaman/dotfiles/blob/master/pentadactyl...

Is there anything similar for Chrome?

edit: i often find myself trying to switch modes in Chrome... oops :-P

There are a few extensions for chrome available. See vrome and vimium and vim-like smoozie. Vrome (http://www.chromeextensions.org/other/vrome/) Vimium (https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/dbepggeogbaibhgn...) Vim-like smoozie (http://code.google.com/p/vimlike-smooziee/wiki/English)

However, because Chrome's extension API isn't as robust as Firefox's these extensions are very limited especially when compared to the feature-set that Vimperator and Pentadactyl provide you in firefox.

Hope that helps.

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